Category Archives: Business

How would you like to trade 1 single Sunday morning breakfast for the full versions of Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom CC, which honestly rule the photographers toolbox? Well that is now exactly what it equates to. Adobe has announced that their Photography Program is now set at the permanent price structure of $9.99 a month. What is that for us South African’s? It’s a measly R106.45 as of this morning (19 June 2014). That is a little more than an Arnold’s breakfast & latte bill.

What does this mean for us as photographers? A version of Photoshop was always a pretty hefty investment (those of us who buy our software) and I would tend to often skip versions if there was nothing I felt was critical to update. Then when Adobe announced the CC version along with the new structure of ‘renting’ the software instead of purchase I will admit I was very on the fence. The internet was amassed with angry users, happy users, the nonchalant (myself). Admittedly Adobe had some kinks to iron our with regards pricing. I personally felt the update was not worth it & happily just carried on with my life.

With the new $9.99 p/m pricing structure for both Photoshop & Lightroom CC, it has become very hard to ignore the absolute value of this offering. If you still think that spending 100 nelson bucks on 2 pieces of software that RULE your business operation then maybe being a photographer is not for you. The benefits are regular updates & essentially anything in future development from Adobe. Their recent push into the mobile platform editing/cataloguing sector is a very interesting one to watch.

So what are you waiting for. If you aren’t already, get legit & sign up. I can’t but help hearing the TV licence jingle in my head when typing this. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Been coming across some really stellar articles lately. Either artists (photographers/illustrators/writers) have more time on their hands to write great articles, or we’re all reaching saturation point. After reading this article, I think it may be a combination of both.

Tim Kreider speaks about the need to turn people down. Especially when these people are offering a handsome remuneration of R0.00 for services rendered. While not all ‘freebies’ or ‘probono’ opportunities are bad, there comes a time when you want to stop living on the sofa & move into the new house. That will never happen while you’re wasting away your time chasing the eternal exposure promised that invariably only comes from free work.

Probably my favourite line from his article:

[box_info] “more important, to make a plea to my younger colleagues. As an older, more accomplished, equally unsuccessful artist, I beseech you, don’t give it away. As a matter of principle. Do it for your colleagues, your fellow artists” [/box_info]

As photographers, we’re essentially the alpha dog. The main man/woman. The team leader. We set the pace for a project. We keep the pulse at the rate it needs to be. This can be a lot of pressure, but this is also why we’re paid the big bucks (haha, can you tell it’s Monday morning humour). Our team is our strength. If you have a great team, there is very little that can send a project off course. A bad team however is like trying to swim up current, while wearing a weight belt. And in jeans.

How does one give feedback to your team that actually helps? Well, the psychologists have an interesting take on this. Praise the process, not the person. We’re very quick to praise a person for their input. Interestingly though this builds on a longer term effect of tearing them down when they face negativity or times of failure. We’re all human & failure is as integral to success. There is no success without failure.

The big news today is coming from Adobe on the product launch (not rolled out yet) of Photoshop CC. There are 2 major Adobe changes:

1. No longer is Photoshop offered as a physically purchasable product. It is now only available through Adobe Cloud.

2. Adobe is no long calling it Adobe Creative Suite, but rather now Creative Cloud.

3. They now offer a camera shake de-blur function so we’ll be seeing a lot more people shaking their cameras while shooting because they want to try this feature out.

Ok that last one is obviously poking fun at Adobe thinking we’re going to be using this feature. I personally doubt I’ll EVER use it, because most of my work is for print & obviously nothing is going to make a CSI-worthy *BAZINGA* enhance de-blur image ok for print. For web? That’s another story.

Starting up my Monday morning in the usual fashion of a cup of coffee & spending a few minutes going through the eternal black hole that is known as Facebook, I like to skim over to the “Pages” tab as then I can see posts that are made from companies/blogs/business I follow specifically. A post from FStoppers (the legends that they are & always will be) caught my eye. Normally something that is predominantly text I skip over as my attention span for things (with everything else I know I need to do) is not fantastic.

Yet this one is really worth the read. Trust me. Any freelancer actually. The same horrible frustrations & threats exist for all freelancers. Some highlights:

Every business has certain integral pillars that keep it functional. One of those is cash-flow. Now it is no secret to myself, nor those I work with that I’m absolutely terrible at admin. Absolutely horrible. If there were an award for worst accounts admin, I’d win it without question. Yet this isn’t exactly something I feel is worth bragging about. The furthest from it. Especially since I am a small business owner that runs & maintains 80% of my business myself. So this got me thinking: How can I improve my methods for quoting, invoicing & following up on payments & general business accounts?

Some reading online & furious googling led me to a variety of solutions. From “get a secretary” to “prioritize your time better”. While these were good options, I wanted something that would help me immediately. I then stumbled upon an article which was about productivity for businesses. One of the things they mentioned was using apps to help with previously menial tasks, like invoicing & quoting. This was right up my alley! While not something that was going to revolutionize my business administration, it did offer a way to spend less time doing something I already hate doing.

Invoice2go was my solution! I could now do invoicing, quoting & reports all in-app & on my iPad. I didn’t need to get back to the studio anymore to sit down & haunch over the computer working them out. Anywhere I was, I’m able to put these documents together & email them off instantly. You can get the app for your iPad or iPhone here. Or check out their website for a PC/MAC version.

I’d love to hear what you as a small business owner do to keep your cash-flow flowing. Please leave your methods or comments below & help share some good business practice with all of us!